What a difference a few years can make. After winning the dishonor of “Worst Company in America” a couple of years in a row, EA has now been given the exact opposite honor, with Forbes naming them among the “World’s Most Admired Companies.” They didn’t make it into the top 50, meaning they were added in an unranked position, but still, it shows that EA has truly turned things around from the poor state that they were in just a few years ago.
“The Most Admired list is the definitive report card on corporate reputations,” reads the page. “Our survey partners at Korn Ferry Hay Group started with approximately 1,500 companies: the Fortune 1,000—the 1,000 largest U.S. companies ranked by revenue—and non-U.S. companies in Fortune’s Global 500 database with revenues of $10 billion or more. Korn Ferry Hay Group then selected the 15 largest for each international industry and the 10 largest for each U.S. industry, surveying a total of 652 companies from 30 countries. To create the 54 industry lists, Korn Ferry Hay Group asked executives, directors, and analysts to rate companies in their own industry on nine criteria, from investment value to social responsibility. A company’s score must rank in the top half of its industry survey to be listed.”
Still, even with this honor being bestowed upon EA, many gamers will feel negatively toward the company. EA has been widely known for greedy practices within the gaming sphere, releasing unfinished games, pushing unnecessary DLC, and otherwise upsetting fans of long running series as they bought out their developer and then tampered with what had been so successful.
In the past few years these practices seem to have slowed, or stopped entirely though. The recent release of the indie developed Unravel really showed a publisher that was looking to change the public’s perception of them. Whether this momentum will continue will have to wait to be seen though.
Published: Feb 19, 2016 12:53 pm